CVE-2026-39881

A flaw was found in Vim. A command injection vulnerability in Vim's NetBeans interface allows a malicious NetBeans server to execute arbitrary Ex commands when Vim connects to it. This occurs due to unsanitized strings in the defineAnnoType and specialKeys protocol messages, leading to arbitrary code execution.

A command injection flaw in Vim's NetBeans interface allows a malicious NetBeans server to execute arbitrary commands when Vim connects to it. This happens because of Vim lacking the sanitization of strings in the protocol command messages, an attacker may leverage that to send maliciously crafted messages to the client that send a | character in certain command fields making Vim further interpret as an Ex command interpolation and executing arbitrary code in the victim's machine.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this vulnerability as having the impact of Moderate, this happens because for an attack be considered successful the victim needs to deliberately connect to an untrusted malicious Netbeans server or the attacker needs to intercept the control messages and properly change it (MiTM) with the malicious payload. Additionally the code executed will be executed with the same privileges as the user running the Vim process, meaning the impact will be restricted by the same privilege level as the edit process has.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Users should refrain to connect to untrusted netbeans server.